Access and Erasure: How to Identify Your Data

How a visitor finds the identifier under which MousePlayer holds their session data, and how a request for access or erasure is made. Part of the Privacy Policy.

1. Why an identifier is needed at all

MousePlayer does not know who you are. It collects no name, no e-mail address and no telephone number, and it stores IP addresses only in truncated form (without the last octet or block). A visit is distinguished from other visits by a randomly generated identifier that is created in your own browser – nothing more.

There is one exception, and it lies with the website operator: they can attach their own customer ID to a visit (for example after you sign in with them) or give a visitor a name in their account. That information is then stored as well, and it is erased along with the rest.

The consequence cuts both ways. It is why a recording cannot simply be traced back to you by name. And it is why a request for access or erasure needs that identifier: without it there is nothing to search for. Under Art. 11(2) GDPR we are permitted to say so – and we would rather say it plainly here than let you find out after writing to us.

2. Where the identifier lives

The identifier is stored in your browser, under the key mp_visitor_id, and it belongs to the website you visited – not to mouseplayer.com. Browsers keep this storage strictly separated by website, which is exactly what protects you: no site can read another site's storage.

For you this means one thing: you have to read the identifier while you are on that website. A page here cannot do it for you.

3. The quick way: your data page

We run a page that answers the request directly: www.mouseplayer.com/my-data. It shows how many sessions are stored under an identifier, from what period and on which websites – and it can have all of them erased.

Because of the separation described above, that page cannot read the identifier off the website you visited. There are three ways to get it there:

  • Through the operator's link. If the website you visited links to the page from its privacy notice, that link already carries your identifier and the page opens with your data. This is the shortest route, and the one operators are asked to provide – see the next section.
  • By entering it yourself. Read the identifier on that website (below), then paste it into the field on the page.
  • Automatically, on mouseplayer.com itself. If you were recorded on our own site, the page finds your identifier without any action from you.

The page deliberately shows no recordings, only counts, dates and domains: the identifier is a key without a password, and anyone who obtained it could otherwise watch your behaviour. An erasure requested there is carried out, as a rule, within minutes.

Reading the identifier by hand

Open the website in question, then open the browser's developer tools (F12, or right-click → Inspect), switch to the Console tab, paste the following line and press Enter:

localStorage.getItem('mp_visitor_id')

The answer is either a character string – that is your identifier – or null. null means there is nothing stored for this website in this browser, and therefore no data of yours to find.

4. For website operators: one line, one link

Asking visitors to use a developer console is not a serious answer for most people. If you operate a website with MousePlayer, link them straight to their own data. MousePlayer.privacyUrl() returns the complete address, with the visitor's identifier already in it:

<a id="mp-my-data" href="#" hidden>See and delete my data</a> <script> window.addEventListener('load', function () { var a = document.getElementById('mp-my-data'), u = null; try { u = window.MousePlayer && window.MousePlayer.privacyUrl ? window.MousePlayer.privacyUrl() : null; } catch (e) {} if (u) { a.href = u; a.hidden = false; } }); </script>

It returns null when there is no identifier – because nothing was recorded, for instance where consent was refused. The link then stays hidden, which is the right answer: an entry leading to an empty page is worse than none at all.

The language follows your page's lang attribute; pass one explicitly if you prefer, as in MousePlayer.privacyUrl('de'). If you would rather show the raw value than link to it, MousePlayer.getVisitorId() still returns it.

This link is yours to place, and only you can place it. Browser storage is separated per website, so we cannot reach your visitors' identifiers from our side – by design, and it is the same separation that keeps their visits to your site unlinkable to their visits anywhere else. For your visitors you are the controller in any case, and the Art. 13 notice belongs in your privacy policy. Without the link, they are left with the manual route above.

5. Where to send the request

Send it to the operator of the website you visited, not to us. They decide what is recorded there and are the controller for that data; MousePlayer only processes it on their instructions.

Include the identifier and the website. The operator can delete individual sessions, or all sessions of a visitor, in their MousePlayer account themselves, or ask us to do it – we assist without undue delay.

If you cannot reach the operator, write to office@mouseplayer.com and name the website. We will forward the request; we will not act on it ourselves, because that decision is not ours to make.

You do not have to wait for anyone in order to have the data erased: an erasure requested on your data page is carried out by us without consulting the operator, as a rule within minutes. Everything else – questions about what was recorded and why, or an objection to the recording as such – goes to the operator, because those decisions are theirs.

If you are a MousePlayer customer yourself, this page concerns you not as a visitor but as an account holder: you can download your account data yourself under “Export my data” in the account settings and delete the account there. Details are in the Privacy Policy.

6. What erasure actually removes

An erasure by identifier removes, across every session belonging to it: the recorded mouse movements, clicks and scrolling; the page views; custom events; the copy of the clicks kept for heatmaps; element tracking hits; the search index of displayed text; free-text survey answers; derived analyses, profile assignments and timelines; page speed measurements; internal notes on the session; any share links pointing to it; archived recording files; and the visitor nickname together with any name the operator assigned. The session records themselves go with them.

One thing is deliberately kept, and it is fair that you know: the record that a consent decision was made – its time, its source, and what was decided. The identifier is removed from it, so it no longer points to you. We keep it because we must be able to demonstrate that recording was based on consent (Art. 5(2) GDPR). It contains no behavioural data.

The daily heatmap summary also remains: how often a spot on a page was clicked, with no link to any session or visitor.

Backups are a separate matter. Data erased in the live system remains in backup copies until those expire in the ordinary course – after 364 days at the latest. We do not restore backups to re-insert erased data; if we ever have to restore a backup, we carry out the erasure requests already completed again.

An erasure requested on the data page takes exactly this path. The page itself deletes nothing; it notes the request, and our background process carries it out with the same chain, normally within minutes.

7. The limits, stated plainly

  • A cleared browser storage means a lost identifier. If you have deleted your site data since the visit, the identifier is gone and we cannot reconstruct it.
  • Another browser or device means another identifier. There is no linkage between them – by design. Each has to be requested separately.
  • An IP address is not a substitute. IP addresses are stored only in masked form, so they identify no one individually.

Where the identifier cannot be produced and the operator has not passed its own customer identifier either (section 1), we are unable to attribute any data to you, and under Art. 11(2) GDPR the rights of access and erasure cannot be exercised on that basis. This is a consequence of collecting as little as possible – not a way of avoiding the request.